34 comments:

I loved that. He used a spiral pattern and covered every inch of his environment. You could really get a good sense of which toys he liked the best, particularly the round one with the mirror on it. Babies do love mirrors!

Babies are so cool, but I'm not wanting any more at this point. I'm quite happy to enjoy other people's, at a safe distance.

This baby is never alone. Mom and/or Dad are just off camera in the other part of the dining room. Recall that human interactions (and naps) have been edited out. It's true that the baby isn't being toted around for any of this compressed time, but that's OK. He looks happy to be exploring his world, which means he's completely comfortable. I'm sure if he showed any anxiety that someone would be there to comfort him.

When my oldest was an infant I worked from home. He used to explore on my home office floor this same way. I was at the computer never more than a step or two away from him. It was a great arrangement for both of us.

This is just like the classic physics observation by Robert Brown of the random walk traveled by pollen particles floating on water, demonstrating random thermal (or "brownian") motion. Einstein later worked out the math in a famous paper in 1905. If we map the mean-square displacement of the child as a function of time, we could determine the diffusion coefficient of a nine-month-old (though the presence of the walls complicates it a bit).